Troops move on Baghdad area

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Attack helicopters pumped rockets at gunmen holed up in office towers and apartment blocks Wednesday, as U.S. and Iraqi forces swept through a notorious Sunni-insurgent enclave in the heart of Baghdad.

Iraqi soldiers and police were joined by elements of the U.S. 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, and the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat team, 2nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis, for the operation dubbed Tomahawk Strike 11.

The U.S. military said the fighting around Haifa Street was part of a new offensive launched before dawn to disrupt illegal militias and bring the volatile area at the heart of Baghdad under the control of Iraqi security forces.

The attack began within hours after President Bush, in his State of the Union speech, urged Congress to get behind his plan to boost troops and crack down on violence in Baghdad and other volatile areas of Iraq.

The low thud of mortar blasts rocked the capital for hours, and smoke billowed into the sky above Haifa Street, dubbed "Sniper Alley," which U.S. and Iraqi forces have struggled to tame.

It was the second time this month that U.S. and Iraqi forces clashed with insurgents on the commercial and residential street just north of the Green Zone, which is home to the U.S. and British embassies, as well as the Iraqi parliament.

Iraqi officials said the operation was not part of a planned security offensive for the capital but that it would prepare the way for a more concerted ground effort to clear out and hold troubled neighborhoods.

"What kind of security plan is this?" asked one terrified resident, who spent the morning cowering in his home. "They are destroying us, pounding an area less than 1-square-kilometer with mortars, shells from helicopters and their tanks."

As many as 31 gunmen were killed and 35 detained Wednesday, including numerous foreign fighters, the Ministry of Defense said in a statement. The U.S. military confirmed seven arrests.

Iraqi forces said they uncovered a large weapons cache near Karkh High School. Numerous rocket-propelled grenades, as well as anti-tank and artillery rounds, were seized, the U.S. military said.

Sunni political and religious leaders protested the operation, which Adnan al-Dulaimi, a lawmaker with the main Sunni bloc, called "barbaric."

Residents accused the United States of unwittingly aiding Shiite Muslim militiamen who reportedly have been trying to force the mostly Sunni Arab inhabitants from their homes in recent weeks as part of a pattern of sectarian cleansing that is redrawing the map of the once largely integrated capital.

The U.S. military stressed in a statement that the operation did not target only Sunni insurgents, but was "rather aimed at rapidly isolating all active insurgents and gaining control of this key central Baghdad location."

Bush has pledged to send about 17,500 troops to Baghdad and another 4,000 to western Anbar province to help Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki quell the violence, despite opposition from Democrats who now control both houses of Congress.

Critics say the plan risks drawing U.S. troops into a complicated civil war and exposes them to the possibility of increased casualties.

Los Angeles Times staff writers Borzou Daragahi, Said Rifai and Saif Rasheed in Baghdad, and special correspondents in Hilla, Babil and Baghdad contributed to this report.